Music notation is widely used for learning and playing a piece of music. The traditional way of notating music is through the use of a system of notes, letters, marks and other symbols arranged on a group of five parallel lines, called a staff or stave. Pitch is shown by the placement of notes on the staff and duration is shown with different note shapes and additional symbols, such as ties. More recently, and with increasing popularity, music is also being notated using tablature, a form first used in the Renaissance for lute music. Tablature notation uses vertical lines to represent the strings of an instrument, horizontal lines to represent the frets of an instrument and dots selectively placed on the horizontal lines to indicate finger placement. In sum, tablature notation tells a musician where to place his or her fingers on a particular instrument rather than which pitches to play. Tablature is typically used to notate music for fretted string instruments, e.g., guitar, bass, lute, mandolin and banjo and, today, is most commonly used in notating pop music.
Music notation has traditionally been written or printed on sheets of paper approximately 8½″×11″ in size, providing for convenient storage and transport of the music as well as use on a music stand during practice and/or performance. See U.S. Pat. No. 1,354,176to Dobson and U.S. Pat. No. 650,783 to Martin. As a result, however, conventional music notation is small in size and does not facilitate group collaboration, particularly among musicians working on the same piece of music. Sharing a single piece of music detracts from a musician's overall learning experience when studying with others. This is particularly disadvantageous in those settings where two or more musicians are trying to learn a new song or a new part of a song together from the same piece of music. For example, two guitar players may want to strum through the chords of a song in unison or have one guitarist play chords while the other guitarist plays a solo. The inconvenience and frustration of crowding around a single 8½″×11″ sheet of music hinders a musician's ability to learn and causes unneeded expense by requiring musicians to purchase additional copies of the same piece of notation.
Moreover, a single piece of music often requires the use of multiple pages to notate an entire song for a single instrument. In turn, a practicing or performing musician is required to remove at least one hand from his or her instrument to turn to the next page of music. Keeping both hands on the instrument is critical for most instruments and removal thereof marks a significant interruption in the learning process. This is particularly problematic for beginning musicians trying to develop rudimentary finger techniques, proper playing posture, sight-reading skills and an understanding of rhythm. It is well-known in the art that many novice musicians never advance past the first page of music notation in light of the difficulty in turning a page while keeping both hands on the instrument. As a result, many musicians are never able to learn a single song in its entirety.
Furthermore, it is becoming increasingly more common for ensembles, e.g., rock bands, jazz bands and many other musical groups, to learn and play a broad repertoire of popular music comprising songs written and/or performed by a variety of artists. Music notation for these songs is commonly published and sold as part of a bundle or collection of transcriptions within a magazine or as a book of songs from a particular time period by a single artist or music group. Therefore, musicians are often required to purchase an entire magazine or book to obtain the music notation for a single song. In addition, a majority of these magazines and books are not self-standing and require the use of a music stand or some other support device. For many musicians, particularly those traveling from performance to performance, carrying a music stand is inconvenient or often not feasible. This issue of portability is compounded when a group of musicians are collaborating and each needs his or her own stand to display their music. Further still, such magazines and books are typically manufactured with stiff bindings that tend to make reading, learning and playing a piece of music notation a frustrating and unproductive experience, detracting from the musician's ability to learn and play an entire song.